As his daughter says in the afterword, the true history and horror of what happened under the Nazis (and the Japanese on my side of the world), tends to be numbed when spoken about as a group. There are also disturbing reminders of how many seemingly good people witnessed these events unfolding.

Otto will leave the camps unable to speak about his experiences and re-enter society as a voice for his people.

Thank you, NetGalley and Octopus Publishing US, Monoray, for the advanced copy of A Gypsy In Auschwitz in exchange for my honest review.

It is a hard-hitting story through the eyes of Otto and one that needs to be learned from if we ever want to live in peace. All survivors of Auschwitz are complete warriors to me, but what I loved about this book and this man, was how he was able to find certain things comical and laugh about them afterwards. Otto's tales of endurance from the camps catalogue the horrors, ranging from the lice ("If you shook a blanket, they would scatter everywhere like grains of sand. It emotionally hurts to the point of your heart aching to how they then got treated during this difficult time. The photographs in this were a lovely added touch allowing me the reader to fully emotionally invest in what was being told.

It's like something from Grimms' Fairy Tales, with this monstrous woman offering a food, drinks and a "heavenly bed. As restrictions against his people increase, they're forced to stop their usual trades, given compulsory labour and receive welfare payments instead. Otto Rosenberg is telling Nazi persecution of his people, to remind us that their hatred of ‘outsiders’ did not stop with the Jews, but led to the murder of many other groups.

After reading Witold Pilecki's report on his time in Auschwitz-Birkenau gathering information on the camp, I have enough background knowledge to fill in the gaps of what happened to Otto Rosenberg that he didn't say. Later he will reflect that "If things had gone on the way they were, without the war, I might well have stayed at Christ the King and I think that I might even have become a priest. I hope Otto's mission of reintegration of the Sinti and Roma can assist in healing the wounds of previous generations, and that the lessons are not forgotten. From the early post-war period when he was once more forced to work and faced demands to show his papers, despite them having been taken from him, through to his long fight for reparations and recognition of the genocide committed by the Nazis against the Sinti and Roma and then ongoing civil rights issues, his struggle is powerfully expressed.

Trying his best to survive he worked hard and scrounged for food whenever possible, as well as being a witness to some horrific violence. He was on top of the world has he started earning in a factory in an armament factory in Berlin- Lichtenburg. A child who lost his family and friends, and yet despite his age was brave enough to try and stand up for himself and others by joining a revolt against his captors. The second moment and what really struck a nerve with me was when I read how after liberation, the victims still struggled to get their life on track because they were often left to figure it out on their own.

All because they were viewed as subhuman by the Aryans, and blamed for most of Germany's problems after losing WWI. Otto's story became heartbreaking even more when they were deported to Auschwitz a place no one ever wanted to come nearby, a place where you enter but you never come out.

Sinti, Rom-families, WW2, Germany, holocaust, nonfiction, memoir, memories, prison, family, survivors, 1930s, kindness, photos, victimization, survival, survivor's-guilt, genocide, historical-figures,. He also details school (including cleanliness rules) and having to leave at 13 to help his grandmother. At one point he even understands he was experimented on, but he can only see the kindness in the doctors’ behaviour and feels that it counts.